The Bungee Blog

One size does not necessarily fit all. Although it is my fervent hope that the very vast majority of the book’s readers found it to their liking and very useful to their endeavors, it never hurts to cross multiple approaches in order to get a better understanding of a topic.

Which is why I couldn’t be silent on the recent release of fellow Prototype Core member Andrew Dupont’s book, Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us. Amazon has Search-Inside already, and you can grab a free chapter at Ajaxian.

You’ll notice Amazon pairs Andrew’s book and mine more often then not

Andrew’s a superb Prototype expert, one of the four people, actually, having commit rights to Prototype’s repository. He’s extremely active (far more than I these days, I’m afraid) and I have every confidence his book is very useful. Check it out!

Get it now. I’m serious. YSlow’s there, Firebug 1.2 beta’s there, Web Developer Toolbar’s there, and it just kicks the living crap out of Firefox 2 for performance, not to mention all the cool dev-oriented stuff like more advanced JS, better extension stuff, better <canvas>, better SVG, better support for cutting-edge standards, and the like.

Get it now. Get it today.

I finally find a moment to spread the good news: Tobie equipped Prototype with a deprecation/removal assistance layer. This extra deprecation.js file, to be loaded right after Prototype, spews clear, detailed, advise-replete messages in your Firebug console whenever your scripts use a now-removed or deprecated feature from earlier versions of the lib.

It’s a great help for migrating, and migrate you should. Get the whole details, usage recommendations, and grab the file on the relevant post at the Prototype Blog.

As announced on the Prototype blog, version 1.6.0.2 just released.  Like all 4-digit releases, it’s about performance improvements and bug fixes. Specifically, it is backwards-compatible with 1.6.0.

It does feature a security update revolving around JS environments with no Same Origin Policy (SOP), such as Dashboard Widgets or Opera Widgets; you can read all about it on the library’s blog. The fix was backported in the 1.5.1 branch to produce 1.5.1.2, for those who cannot yet migrate to the better shores of 1.6-ness.

An item of note though: along the way, we finally added Opera to our officially supported browsers, starting with version 9.25.

Right.

So I get my first review on Amazon.com, and what do I learn in there? That my ghosting example b0rks. Dang! The code is simple, so what gives?

Well, it so happens that my own code in Scripty’s ghosting support for non-absolutely-positioned elements is flawed: it relies (for a reason I can’t fathom in retrospect) on expandoes, and attempts to remove them when it’s done, which IE (both 6 and 7) does not support (it lets us removeAttribute it though).

As a reminder, an expando property is a custom property you slap onto an unsuspecting DOM element. You can think of it like a custom attribute on an HTML tag, but at the DOM level.

This issue was noticed before, too, and a ticket was opened in Trac a month ago, but I sadly confess I have no time these days to monitor anything in the Trac but the changesets.

Since expandoes are unnecessary in this very context, I stripped the superfluous indirection in the source code, created a patch, updated the ticket and my book’s online codebase (both the expanded file and the archive files).

So feel free to grab the new files and go along! I can only hope Thomas will apply the fix soon, so the official release is in sync.

Update Jan 21: Thomas applied the patch. You can grab the edge version from Subversion trunk.

As 1.5.1 had 1.5.1.1 in its time, 1.6 got a 1.6.0.1 bugfix release, which was tagged in the Subversion repository on December 5, 2007.

Obtaining this version

For some reason, the official website’s download page was not updated, but I think it should be soon. In the meantime, you can grab it here.

What’s new?

As I said, it’s a bugfix release. So it’s entirely about fixing little qwirks, unlike the upcoming Prototype 1.6.1, which will feature a good deal of new features. Still, grabbing 1.6.0.1 means you’re on better ground when it comes to stability and correctness.

For all the details, check out the top of its changelog.

Hey,

Well, here it is. The paper books have landed in all the major warehouses, and those early buyers who got the combo, or pre-ordered the paper book at PragProg, got their anxiously-awaited book shipped off early this week.

While I am no fan of the dead-tree form, it certainly has its advantages: it’s usually much easier on the eye than the electronic form (the resolution is higher, the white doesn’t glare, etc.), and it’s easy to carry around and read through on, say, public-transportation-based commuting. I certainly bought more than a few recent IT books in print.

On the other hand, the PDF is in color, syntax-highlighted, searchable, hyperlinked, etc.

Frankly, you should get either the PDF or the combo. And both are available only from PragProg.

However, I understand how non-U.S.-based readers may favor their local Amazon or bookstore, if only to save on shipment fees and reduce delays. But then, major online retailers, not to put too fine a point on it, move at glacial speed. Amazon.com, for instance, despite having numerous copies of my book in their warehouses, is announcing it online for January 11. (They are taking preorders, though.)

By the way, if you already got a whiff of the book and love it (“hey, thanks!”), should you wish to repay the author in kind, you might want to know I get much better royalties on paper books sold directly through PragProg than through “channel sales” (retailers). So there it is: full disclosure, and perhaps a reason for a few of you to buy it at PragProg instead of somewhere else.

In short, the book is available now. If you can’t wait to get your hands on the paper form, get it at PragProg. If you can wait (but should you really?) and favor other online retailers, buy it there.

It is my fervent hope that the book will reach as large an audience as possible, and help each and every reader big time with their JavaScript tasks. I look forward to reading about your feedback in the forums, in this blog’s comments, and in the online retailers’ comment areas.

Coming up

I’ll start posting extra content in here on what I hope will be a regular basis. There are quite a few ideas and tips that I didn’t feel belonged into the book (or it would be a real brick), and that I saved for this blog. I’ll also post possible solutions and further discussion on the Neuron Workout sections. I might even start the Proto/Scripty version of the famous Ruby Quizz in here!

Thanks to everyone at PragProg who made this book possible, and to all my tech reviewers for their excellent help. As for you, my dear readers, I can only say this: read and enjoy!

The online codebase for the book had been lagging behind since the official release on November 7.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Andy Hunt, you can now properly access both the archived versions and the individual files linked from the PDF.

Today, the book, Prototype 1.6 and script.aculo.us 1.8 released.

As PDF, at least. The paper form should be available anywhere within a month or so. But why wait? Just head over to the book’s page and grab either the PDF, or the PDF+paper combo, or just order the paper form now, to be shipped ASAP to your waiting mailbox.

The web is abuzz, and I see a lot of wonderful reviews and accolades already:

• On the Prototype blog
• On the Scripty blog
• On Riding Rails
• On Ajaxian.com

I’m more grateful than I can say to a lot of people. First and foremost Sam and Thomas, who agreed to sync releases of Prototype 1.6, script.aculo.us 1.8, and the book; and to the team at Pragmatic Programmers, especially my editor, Daniel Steinberg, for driving the project, and obviously Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt, for driving “Prag.”

The libs are there; they kick ass (I’m especially fond of Prototype 1.6 and its custom events). Get the book and get the most out of them. You’ll never use JavaScript the same way you did.

The book’s second beta, B1, was released today. It now features the script.aculo.us part, for a total of about 390 pages!

The book has entered tech review and its next release should be the final one, complete with the latest Prototype 1.6 updates, the intro and preface, and having gone through the usual late stages (copy editing, indexing, etc.).